


howl's morning nyaptime

by teacuptaako



Category: Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Boy Cat Howl Pendragon, Catboy Howl Pendragon, Crack, Domestic Bliss, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Post-Canon, problems are not on purpose (for once)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28872129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacuptaako/pseuds/teacuptaako
Summary: "Cat!" Sophie yells, pointing wildly, "Boy! Howl! Cat! Boy! Howl! Catboyhowl! Catboy Howl!"
Relationships: Sophie Hatter/Howl Pendragon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45
Collections: Secret Snipers Exchange 2020





	howl's morning nyaptime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyDevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyDevil/gifts).



> EVES! HAPPY ONE YEAR! GUESS WHAT YOU'RE GETTING! AND IT'S NOT CLICKBAIT THIS TIME? It's been SO lovely chatting and getting to know you-- hope this makes you laugh as much as you've made ME laugh over the last while. 
> 
> From your prompt list, I have Crafted For Thou: moving castle gen (fic is tagged the way it's tagged bc howl and sophie are background together but it's not the focus at all), characters being gremlins, catboy!somebody, crack, and good feeling/cheer up fics.

Something above Sophie _bangs_! fantastically, and a cloud of purplish-green smoke billows down the steps to get itself stuck in the ram of wool she's trying to coax into becoming jacket shaped.

“That better not be magic!” She shouts, clacking her needles crossly and dropping a stitch. The smoke gathers itself into a corner and forms into a guilty sort of human shape near Calcifer’s fireplace before whooshing back up the stairs. “Don’t tell me what you’re doing up there!” Sophie calls after it, dropping another stitch, “Don’t tell me it’s magic!”

Infuriatingly calm and even-keeled, Howl’s voice floats down the stairs. “It rather sounds, darling, like you want to know what I’m doing. But I hate lying! Queen of my heart, love of my—“

“Phooey!” Sophie flings away the jacket attempt and stomps up the stairs to confront the criminals directly. Calcifer shrinks back in his fireplace and makes a sound like a fire sputtering out, which is his ‘meddling Sophie is up to some nonsense,’ indicator, and which Sophie doesn’t particularly appreciate at this moment in time. Especially when she's so clearly onto something. The closer she gets to Howl the more suspicious she becomes and all the more evidence of wrong-doing presents itself.

Bottles labelled with various ingredient names sit un-capped along the wall leading to Howl’s bedroom, some of them emitting weird sounds, a few rattling against the baseboards, some of them glowing slightly, and all of them ominously empty. The closer to the bedroom Sophie gets, the weirder they become: “pixie dust,” and “Light at The End of The Tunnel,” ingredients Howl throws into almost everything, are right near the door, but Sophie had to kick aside both “Old Bay” and “green USB cables,” whatever the hell those were, to get into the hallway. Whatever he's up to, Howl's running out of ideas for it.

Michael, leaving the bedroom clutching an empty jar labelled “unconjugated Latin,” makes eye contact with Sophie and freezes.

“Hah!” Sophie says, as he scrambles to throw away the jar and block the bedroom door at the same time. “What’s all this then? It better not—“

“—Sophieeeee,” wails Michael, weakly tugging on her sleeve as Sophie bursts past him triumphantly, “don’t… go in... Well, I tried, Howl.”

A calico cat is wobbling tensely on Howl’s bed, balanced on three legs. One of Howl’s better magic wands has been tied with string to his right paw, and it’s awkwardly mixing some sludge in one of Sophie’s good ceramic mixing bowls. “Great job Michael,” it says, in Howl’s voice.

“No.” Sophie stops dead in the doorway. The cat is smoking slightly from the ears, emitting the same colored vapor that had led her upstairs. “Absolutely not.”

“That’s right, that's the way,” encourages the cat. “Close your eyes, nothing to see here. Michael— let’s try the lava lamp juice next.”

Sophie picks Howl up by the scruff of his neck and dangles him in the air. He refuses to acknowledge her, flicking his tail as if unbothered, and clears his throat to prod Michael into action. Sophie fixes Michael with one of her most intimidating stares in an attempt to cancel Howl out and pry some answers out of the weakest link in this criminal chain.

“What.” She says. “Also how.” She shakes Howl slightly, halting abruptly when she remembers kittens don’t like that. “Is this an attempt to get my pity? You crackpot.”

Howl seizes upon this with his typical emotional opportunism. “Yes it is rather pitiable, isn’t it?” His eye-contact phobia disappears in an instant. Suddenly Sophie is being confronted with huge blue eyes, the pupil so wide and fathomless that it almost swallows her completely. He starts to tremble in a said, waifish, sort of way, reminding Sophie quite strongly of how Howl looks in human form when confronted with concepts like ‘ _taxes,_ ’ and ‘ _eating breakfast before three pm_.’

It works for about twelve seconds. Struck, Sophie starts to put him down. But then Howl fails to disguise how smug he is about that and Sophie remembers how mad she is.

“I told you not to do magic when you were sick! Remember last time? Or— you don’t! Clearly! But I do! There was mud, Howl, mud everywhere! On floor day!”

“Heavens forbid anything happen to floor day,” Howl says gravely, even as his ears twitch backwards, amused. “But you’ll see, this time—“

“—No mud!” Michael interrupts enthusiastically. “And this time we were— it was—“ he quails under Sophie’s gaze, then rallies under Howl’s. “It was an emergency!”

“An emergency,” repeats Sophie, anger building again. “Because a one hundred degree fever is the perfect time to try turning into a cat and! Casting cat magic! Can’t delay it! Not even by one day!”

Howl meows sadly. Struck, Sophie collects him closer to her body, letting go of the scruff in favor of supporting his feet and back like a baby. “Or was it involuntary? Do you have a magic cold?” She bounces him comfortingly. Howl presses one of his little paws to her cheek.

There’s a pause. It drags on for a bit.

"Yes.” Howl decides, finally.

Sophie drops him.

Howl rolls onto his back and stretches, as if to indicate that he isn’t offended or even slightly hurt, and indeed, not surprised at all by being thrown like a hot potato with toe beans. After establishing that he isn’t trying to justify himself OR his choices, and that he doesn’t care about what Sophie thinks either way about the whole thing, he adds, “I was planning to banish the fur. From that coat.” He sniffs haughtily. His whiskers twitch.

Sophie’s anger doesn’t fizzle out, it never does, she's not built like that, but it quells a bit and fondness surges to replace the feeling. The Witch of the Waste’s— Grandmother’s— new fur shawl had gotten fur all over both floors of the house and all the patio furniture, and Sophie had spent much of yesterday muttering under her breath about it. It had never occurred to her that this might motivate Howl into doing something about the situation. A sick Howl was even more self-centered than regular Howl, and twice as uninclined to practice such trite concepts as empathy.

It was unexpectedly nice that Howl thought of Sophie being upset as an emergency.

“Howl…” she says, scratching his belly. “Well. Whatever you did, it’s broke your fever.” And then, unable to hold it back, “and given you _such_ a soft little tummy, didn’t it, _didn’t it_ , sweetheart…”

Howl purrs loudly. It rumbles under her hand, like a tiny little version of Calcifer’s furnace rattling. “You think so?”

“Yes I _do,_ such a sweet little kitty—“

“Yuck.” Michael says, loudly, sort of shouting it from where he’s hiding in the hallway.

Sophie clears her throat and steps back. “And now you’re stuck. How are you stuck? You didn’t get stuck when you shapeshifted before.” Only Howl could be this mix of endearing and useless. Sometimes the endearingness and uselessness corresponded. He was in the sweet spot here, but any more uselessness would start delivering diminishing returns. Past that and then the uselessness would start to put the endearingness actively into the red.

Howl hums, a sound similar but not the same as his purr. “Cats are allergic to magic. It disrupts their natural feline abilities. I’m a very good wizard but only a C+ cat. And of course Michael is—“ Michael pokes his head back into the room hopefully. “— trying his best.”

This was a moment that demanded serious consideration.

First: did Sophie think that Howl as a human would be an improvement over Howl the tiny, soft, gently blinking, fuzzy tummied cute (little!) calico, with his teeny claws, who was now meowing and chirping as Sophie pulls him into her lap, who is kneading her leg, aaah ( _aaah!_ ), his tail flexing as he stretches and yawns— the _yawning_ , his _fangs_ , these two little needles poking out of his itty-bitty mouth— and— was that purring again? That slightly scraping noise, and he’s— and—

Howl spits a hairball into Sophie’s knee.

“I can turn you back,” Sophie decides, emotionless.

Howl looks at her and starts screaming, staggering around the bed on unsteady legs, horrified by himself and taking it out on his bed sheets. Those cute little claws tear his top-blanket down the middle and then into three separate pieces. The smoke wafting from his ears notches up in intensity, as if gaining power from his disgust, and starts to hang uncomfortably in the air rather than dissipate.

“Please do,” Michael says, edging into the bedroom. He’s still holding the empty bottle of “unconjugated Latin” and swaps it out for one of the still-full containers balanced precariously on Howl’s dresser.

This bedroom, falling firmly out of Sophie’s cleaning domain, has always driven her insane. When she started sleeping with Howl and moved in, it's only got her battier. The place is in many ways one of the most fantastic places in the entire castle, in the most literal sense: the bookshelves stuck to the side of the walls brim and overflow with all kinds of gadgets and ancient looking devices that defy all logic with their construction and dare you to look away, secure that you won't. The colors of things seem to meld into the colors of nearby things, linking them, encouraging one’s eye to skip from one side of the room to the other and to get lost in the swirling haze of magic without realizing just how far your eye had wandered from your original point.

The bedroom is also the least organized place, not just in the castle, but in all of Ingary. The only part of it that makes any sense at all is Sophie's bedside drawer. It takes Michael almost half an hour to even find all the physical components of the spell that Howl insists are “in those cabinets somewhere,” and then another half hour to track down the specific cauldron that they’ll need, in place of Sophie’s good bowl, which she confiscates as soon as she realizes that “slug secretion (sprightly),” is one of the components.

Michael and Howl had been adhering to a magic system that they’re both stubbornly vague about until Sophie gets Michael’s ear in a good pinch, upon which Michael spills that they’d made the potion for a very strong universal cleaner and then added animal components that were supposed to cancel out the ‘feline aspects,’ of Howl’s transformation. When Sophie had asked what that meant, Michael had further squirmed, until she applied pressure to the captured ear, and Michael reluctantly revealed Howl had a jar of Wolfsbane that they’d drawn a stick figure image of a cat onto the label of.

“No.” Sophie says.

“Who’s the powerful wizard here?” Howl argues but weakly, as he’s trying to bury his face in Sophie’s collarbone, the place he seems to have deemed safest for the moment. The smoke from his ears wisps up Sophie’s neck, cool like fog. The magic wand tied to Howl's paw is digging into Sophie's ribcage, but it seems to be giving him comfort so she doesn't point it out. Honestly. The things she does for him.

“Definitely not you,” Sophie answers, and looks away from Michael’s hopeful face without saying anything. She tries to be tactful when she can. “Alright. Howl, stay here. Michael, step back.”

Sophie gets to her feet, brushes her hands briskly down her skirt, and takes a quick second to refresh herself on what she knows about magical theory.

All this physical stuff that her boys have been putting together is only one part of it: there’s the verbal component, the mystical muttering, which Howl seems to delight in, and she _thinks_ there’s some bit where your clothing billows dramatically and light flashes. Maybe that’s just to signal that the magic works? But before that there’s usually— throwing parts of things into other things, and chanting, and before the glowing really kicks off, there’s a gesture. Oh, and the “wanting stuff to happen,” part was supposed to be all at the same time as the rest of it: Howl descried this to Michael as imparting your will, and Michael described this back to Sophie as Howl being really bossy but in the fourth dimension.

That seems to make sense, except for the part about the fourth dimension, and Sophie figures that even if she doesn’t have it all down, the willpower should make up for most of the missing parts. People have told Sophie that she’s very strong willed. 

So. Okay. It would all be fine. She clears her throat and brushes her hands for a second time.

Howl makes a _snort_ sort of sound and then a _gurk_ one as he gets some of his whiskers in his mouth.

“ _Cat_.” Sophie intones, in her most mysterious and deep voice. “ _Boy_.” She points to Howl and then to Michael.

They both stare at her. Howl’s whiskers twitch as he spits them out.

“Oh,” she remembers, “Wait, before I do that part Howl has to get into the cauldron.”

All three of them focus in on the caldron at the same time. It’s burbling angrily, bright yellow and rather goopy looking. There’d be enough space for Howl to stand securely within it, but he’d be right up to his chin in thick, slightly smelly, muck.

Confidence would be the key to selling this.

“I think that looks really… luxurious.” Sophie tries, “Mud baths are. They’re really…”

Bringing up mud was a mistake. Sophie can almost see the light in Howl’s eyes change as he remembers the mud disaster from the last time he tried to cast magic when he was sick: the grossness and the squish of it underneath your feet, the smearing brown which had stained all their walls for weeks. When Sophie tries to pick up Howl, he unattaches himself from the cuddle and scratches her arm, dragging down viciously and springing away.

Michael gasps.

Sophie isn’t really sure what to do. Gasping seems about right.

The scratches down her arm sting, bright pinpoints of pain flashing and fading just as quick, from her wrist to her elbow. “Damn,” she says.

“Mrow,” Howl replies, perhaps meaning the exact same thing, and immediately tries to bolt out the door.

Michael sacrifices himself to keep Howl inside, diving for the doorway to slam it shut and then putting his entire body weight on the handle while Howl does his absolute best to destroy his leg. Most kittens Sophie’s familiar with are wide eyed and soft hearted bundles of fur that wanted nothing but to purr against your leg and perhaps eat cheese out of your hand. Contrast to this, Howl’s immediate goal appears to be killing Michael, the long-term plan being vengeance against the entire world (which has wronged him), and he was making decent headway on the first of those.

It takes Michael and Sophie working in tandem to pry Howl off the floor, and then deposit him into the cauldron, and then Michael has to lie on his stomach over the top and absorb all Howl’s angry attempts to escape as Sophie frantically tries to both invent and cast the spell to change him back into a person.

Howl seems to have forgotten that human words are an option to him— all he’s doing now is yowl like the world is ending, and the grimaces on Michael’s face suggest that most of his problem solving is claw-based. Purple-green smoke is absolutely flooding the room, pouring from inside the cauldron to carpet the entirety of the surrounding floor. And Howl’s protests are only increasing in volume.

“Cat!” Sophie repeats, dropping to her knees beside the cauldron, trying to point around Michael’s flailing limbs and into the makeshift Howl-prison, “Boy! _Cat! Boy!_ ” She focuses firmly on the image of Howl she’s used to: the one with his graceful neck and clever hands, the mischievous and yet kind gleam in his eyes, on the trail of freckles running down his spine and the slightly webbed connections between his toes, and she decides, projecting it into space, that she misses this version of him, not so much asking for it as she is demanding fiercely: give him back.

She waves the spell in a sloppy heart figure in the air in front of her, calling back to how Howl and Michael would form complex patterns as they chanted. But her arms are still pretty tired from knitting for most of the morning and then from the cat fight, so she changes to pointing angrily into Howl’s pissy little scowl. “Cat! Boy! Howl! Catboy! Howl! _Catboy Howl!_ ”

There’s an explosion of smoke. That purple-green miasma blasts outwards, knocking Michael off the cauldron and heaving him to the floor with a heavy thump, and the it rushes back into the cauldron. It swirls into a tornado shape and then there’s a magnificent flash of light, and Howl is back, human Howl, lounging with his seat in the cauldron and his back resting against the wall, legs stretched out and crossed on top of Michael’s prone form like he’s a living room table.

His magic wand is still tied to his right hand.

And there’s— 

“Oops,” says Sophie.

Howl smiles slyly and gangles to his feet, slinging his hands into his pocket. Sophie supposes her mental image of Howl had included the billowy poet shirt and slacks, the loose gold chain hanging around his neck, and turns pink to the ears imagining if it hadn’t. _And with Michael in the room—!_

But the real problem is his ears. Sophie reaches with her hands and touches them, swatting Howl lightly as he sighs dramatically, pouting as he bends at the waist so she can touch them more easily. The little calico cat ears poke from the curls of his black hair and twitch a little as she pets them, turning attentively into her hands.

“Almost perfect,” says Howl. “Michael, isn't it interesting how Sophie got it almost perfect and you turned me from black to having ugly spots?”

“I hate it here,” Michael replies. “And I’m hungry.”

He scuttles out of the bedroom and Sophie can hear him clattering down the hall, knocking ingredient bottles out of the way as he goes. It’s like he’s running away. Sophie can’t fathom what from. She rubs softly on the inside of Howl’s left ear and revels in the throaty _ah_ that Howl tries to contain and fails to.

“It’ll be easy to get the ears right, lovely Sophie,” he breezes, straightening up as Sophie reluctantly steps back, aware that spending any longer petting him would start to raise some uncomfortable questions about her intentions, “a very easy procedure. I’ll just need you to—“

“—Can’t.” Sophie says.

Howl’s ears straighten and flick as his eyes grow wide and comically sad. It's like he's trying to plead in the same manner as he had as a cat, but with his human face, with his sharp eyebrows and pink lips, it's a different expression entirely. “Can’t?”

Sophie feels herself flushing red. “Can’t. Out of… magic.” Despite just pulling away, she reaches and pats softly at the base of his left ear, then contains herself and flings her hand away as if burned. “Going to need all day and probably all of tomorrow to, you know, recover.”

Howl’s grin sharpens. Isn't that just like him.

“I would never want to extend your efforts as long as your nose,” he says, “although nosy Sophie did manage to help today. But I’m sure I can sort this out myself, wouldn't want to trouble you. All I need—“

“—No.”

They stare at each other. Howl keeps grinning. Maybe it was better when he was a cat. Why did Sophie feel like his cheekbones were important to get back? Or his fluffy, soft, hair? Or the straight gleam of his teeth, which… maybe she didn’t get his teeth quite right either. His canines are a bit more pronounced than they ought to be.

Sophie puts her hands against her flaming face, standing and enduring it as Howl bursts into laughter, striding to her and peppering little kisses over the backs of her hands and into the parts of her forehead where her fingers don’t quite cover.

“How could I deny you anything?” He’s smirking. She can sense him smirking. “One day, two, a week, three weeks? Who cares.”

After a great amount of unnecessary teasing, Howl pulls back and allows Sophie a strategic retreat into the backyard. He’s quite tired from a long day of mischief and hijinks, apparently, although he doesn’t have an answer when Sophie asks him how that’s any different at all from his regular agenda.

Sophie stops in the bedroom doorway for a moment and watches Howl magic up a great window across from his bed, looking down over the laundry line and back garden, and then flop into the resulting sunbeam right across three pillows. A low masculine groan seems almost wrung out of him as he flexes his shoulders and gets comfortable on her side of the bed. After a moment he stops. There's some discontented rustling, and then Howl flings the magic wand halfway across the bedroom and into the cauldron. There's a massive explosion. Easily three times the size of the first one. Howl doesn't move at all. Sophie reminds herself _not my job, not my problem, not my job_ \--

And only then does she slip outside.

Michael had said he was hungry, so Sophie makes him eggs and drags them both into the backyard to stand under the sunshine and let Howl have a quiet moment to himself.

Sophie looks at the linen unfurling and thinks about how bright and crisp and clean they are: the flap of them, the soap bubbles floating from the wash bucket next to her and mixing with the clouds, them white too, and turns left to see Michael, sitting cross-legged in the grass, wolfing down the last of his egg whites. It is then that she feels magic strongest, in the the things she makes, in the ways they are hers and not hers, in the way the natural mirrors the human and how neither are ever your control but always under your influence, how you can suggest things to the universe, how their universe hears you out every time.

“Sophie,” Michael says, “what else are we doing today?”

She pulls Grandmother's furry jacket off the cleaning line and folds it in on itself in three swift movements, adjusting the collar until it falls cleanly. That too is magical, setting order so as to have it destroyed. Howl stretches out his collars, spills jam on his sheets, dribbles egg underneath the table and never takes a turn with the broom. But now he’s curled up in their shared bed, warm in the spot where the sun falls through the window. He won’t be purring anymore, but he’ll be sleeping soundly, his fists curled up in the paws of his sleeves.

"Whatever we want,” says Sophie.

**Author's Note:**

> howl @ all times, no matter his body, no matter the scenario: >:3


End file.
